The SimCity BuildIt beginner guide

How to create your city in SCBI

Essential Services

As Mayor, there are eight main areas of Essential Services you must consider:

Government buildings (required to help run things smoothly).
Basic Services:
Power
Water
Sewage
Waste (garbage).
Emergency Services:
Fire forces
Police forces
Health facilities.

Specializations

Specializations add an extra-special layer of activity and excitement to your city.Choose your Specializations by deciding how you want your city to look or which activities you value most for your citizens.

Parks, Gambling, Entertainment, Landmarks, Education, Worship, and Transport all help to keep your citizens happy, occupied, and less likely to complain.Check out the blue bars that appear while you’re placing your Specialization building. The bigger the bar, the bigger the population boost.

Happy citizens

Happy neighborhoods attract more residents, but if the citizens aren’t happy, they’ll abandon their homes and leave town. Your population counter appears at the top of your screen, indicated by the blue people icon.To see your citizens happiness rating, check the smiley face happiness counter on the left of your screen. If the face isn’t green and smiling, indicating happiness, there are a few things you can do to try and keep your citizens happy. You can also check how happy each individual zone is by selecting the Government icon in the Services menu.

Build and upgrade residential zones to increase your base population.
Maintain your population by providing Essential Services.
Boost your city even further with Specialization Services.
Check opinion bubbles, which give you advance warning of problems like traffic jams, lack of services, boredom, or a dirty factory in the neighborhood.

If red exclamation marks appear on the icons on the right of your screen, tap them as soon as possible to find out more.

Currency

There are three types of currencies in SimCity BuildIt:

Simoleons (§): This is your everyday currency.
You’ll need Simoleons for things like purchasing different types of buildings or upgrading roads. You can earn Simoleons as you play or buy more from the Web Store.
SimCash: SimCash can speed up production, increase store slots, and open warehouse or expansion slots. SimCash can also be purchased in the Web Store.
You can convert SimCash directly to Simoleons.
Golden Keys: Golden Keys get you access to premium buildings. These can’t be bought with either Simoleons or SimCash; they can only be earned.

Buildings

Factories

Factories produce raw materials (like metal, chemicals, and wood) to keep your city growing.

1
Tap on a factory and select the material you want to create by dragging it over the factory building.
2
When manufacturing is complete, your Items will appear on top of the factory, where you can tap to collect them.

Commercial buildings

Commercial buildings (such as stores and markets) let you combine and reuse materials to make new, crafted Items. For example, you can use seeds to make tomatoes or craft metal into nails.

1
Tap on your commercial building and tell your citizens what to craft by dragging the Item on top of the building.
2
The finished, crafted Items will appear on top of the building. Tap them to collect them.

Residential zones

Use the manufactured and crafted Items from your factories and commercial buildings to build and upgrade residential zones in your city.Placing a residential zone gives your citizens an area to start building homes. This boosts your population, gets you closer to your next level-up target, and increases your Simoleons.

1
Place a residential zone next to a road to start the building process, then tap the hard hat icon to view the building plans.
2
Building plans show you the Items your contractor needs.
3
Once the building plan materials are gathered, drag the building materials on top of the building, and the work will be completed automatically.

Upgrading buildings

Upgrading is important to increase your population and to keep your citizens’ happiness levels up. Wherever you see a yellow hard hat icon, a building is ready for an upgrade. Tap the icon to see the building plans and rewards available.

Moving buildings

Press and hold a building, drag it to a new location and hit the green checkmark to confirm the move. The white outline below the moving building shows where it will sit in your city.

Bulldozing buildings

Tap and hold the factory or building to demolish, then tap the bulldozer icon that appears on the right side of the screen. A confirmation message will appear to confirm your decision.

Remember: bulldozing can’t be undone. After you bulldoze a building, you lose that building and any upgrades you had in it, if it was a residential one.There is no bulldoze option for commercial buildings.

Items, materials, and inventory

Buying and selling materials

Buying and selling materials is a great way to save manufacturing time or get more Simoleons.There are four main ways to buy and sell.

The Trade Depot for selling
The Global Trade HQ for buying
Accept (or refuse) deals that appear on your city map from other citizens
Complete cargo shipments by sea.

Don’t forget you can also visit friends’ cities to see what they have on offer.

Managing inventory

When you buy Items in the Global Trade HQ or pick up Items created in your factories or commercial buildings, you must collect them. Items go to your inventory, which is in your City Storage building. Free up space in your City Storage by using stored materials to build and upgrade. You can also sell and trade Items (keep checking out the deals that appear on your city map).

Increasing inventory

From your City Storage, tap the green Increase Capacity button to see which storage-themed Special Items are required to increase maximum storage. Collect the necessary Items, tap to Confirm, and your City Storage will immediately increase.

Special Items

Tap on the opinion bubbles that appear over homes to learn your residents’ thoughts. If you invest in their ideas, your population sometimes rewards you with Special Items. There are several different types of themed Special Items. As you accumulate a collection, you can exchange them to upgrade the City Storage, open expansion zones, or instigate Disaster challenges. You can also buy more Special Items with SimCash.

Expanding and remodeling

Expand your city

After reaching the required level, tap an expansion zone to see a list of which bulldozer-themed Special Items are needed to claim that land as your own. Accumulate the necessary Items, then tap to Confirm. You can pick expansion zones in any order, as long as they are connected to your current city limits. Some land is more desirable than others, so the Special Items requirements can vary for each plot.

Remodel your city

Land is precious and you can rearrange your city however you choose. It makes sense to replace older factories and Service buildings with more efficient versions when you can. Use the bulldoze tool to take down roads, residential zones, and other buildings to make more space. Tap the road icon, then choose Bulldoze to demolish sections of the road.To demolish a building, tap and hold the building you’d like to remove, then tap the bulldozer icon that appears on the right side of the screen. Now rebuild as you please. Keep in mind that bulldozing a residential zone will reduce your population.

Other upgrades

If you prefer skyscrapers in marble and glass to edifices of brick and plastic, attract wealthier citizens to build in your city by providing plenty of Services and Specializations. The greater service coverage you provide an area, the better looking an area becomes.Check out the land values of your city visually, by tapping on the residential zone icon on the right of your screen. You can also see how the next upgrade will affect each building.

Regions

Regions operate as satellite cities, each with a unique map and theme. The style of each Region is reflected through distinct Residential Zones, Factories, Crafting Shops, and Crafting Materials.You can start unlocking Regions once your Capital City reaches level 25.Tap the Regions icon (to the left of the club chat icon) in the lower left-hand corner of your Capital City screen to bring up the Regions menu.See what’s required to unlock each new Region:

Region 1: Capital City Level 25.
Region 2: Total Regional Population of 15,000.
Region 3: Total Regional Population of 250,000.
Region 4: Total Regional Population of 1,000,000.
Region 5: Total Regional Population of 10,000,000.

Roads

Roads connect buildings to the rest of your city to help it function.Tap the road icon on the right of the screen to build, upgrade, or bulldoze your roads.

Build: Tap the steamroller icon to go into road-building mode, then tap and drag on your city to draw your road.
Upgrade: Tap the hard hat/traffic light icon.
Bulldoze: Tap the Bulldoze icon, then the section of road you want to remove.

Hot Spots

Hot Spots are upgradeable Specialization Buildings that are built using Regional currency. Each Region has its own set of Hot Spots that fit its theme, but all Hot Spots can be built in any Region or Capital City.Hot Spots are available when you reach a population of 1,000 in any of your Regions.Go to the Building Menu and look for the green indicators in Education, Transportation, Entertainment, and Gambling specialization menus to find the available Hot Spots. Each Hot Spot has a “native” Region. The criteria to unlock it, or currency to buy and upgrade it, are tied to this region.

City Achievements

City Achievements are awarded at your Mayor’s Mansion. These are granted for excellent Mayoral performance like hitting population milestones, being a super-achieving trader, or providing excellent Services for your citizens.When you earn Achievements, you receive bonuses in SimCash.

Playing offline

You can still keep building your city when you’re playing offline or if you lose your connection. Just remember to reconnect as soon as possible to save the progress you made while playing offline.We will occasionally remind you to get back online, as there are a few important reasons to check in with us regularly.

When you play offline:

Your progress isn’t saved. If something happens to your device, you could lose your progress.
Social features are disabled, so you can’t visit your friends’ cities (Daniel's Trade Depot will still be open for business).
Your Trade Depot and Global HQ are inaccessible. If Items you put up for sale when you were online in your Trade Depot are sold while you play offline, you’ll get your Simoleons after you connect again.
Your game won’t get important updates and bug fixes.
You can’t make any purchases of SimCash in the store (but you can still exchange your current SimCash for Simoleons).

Heads-up:

If you have been playing offline on one device and start to play online on a secondary device (using the same account login), any offline progress you made on the first device will be overwritten and can’t be recovered.
If you’ve stayed offline for a while, you’ll eventually be unable to continue playing unless you reconnect.